History of the Hopedale Community: Annotated Edition - Softcover

Ballou, Adin; Hughes, Lynn Gordon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0981640230 ISBN 13: 9780981640235

Publisher: Blackstone Editions, 2010

Synopsis

The Hopedale Community was one of the most important and successful of the many utopian communities started in the mid-nineteenth century United States. It outlasted its famous contemporary, Brook Farm, by nearly a decade. Though it did not succeed in ushering in "a new civilization radically higher than the old," Hopedale did provide its members with security, companionship, meaningful work, and the chance to make a difference in the world around them.

In History of the Hopedale Community, Hopedale's principal founder and theoretician, Adin Ballou, provides a detailed record of the successes, failures, hopes, and disappointments of a small group of people attempting to live together harmoniously, balancing fairness and compassion, and giving practical expression to "their ideal of what human life and human society upon the earth ought to be."

This new edition features:

• a newly restored map of Hopedale
• over 300 many explanatory notes
• a table of members, drawn from the membership records of the community

About this title

About the Author:

Adin Ballou (1803-1890) grew up on a farm in Cumberland, Rhode Island. When he was eleven, his family was converted by the Christian Connexion, under whose auspices he began preaching at age 18. Shortly afterward he converted to Universalism. He served as Universalist minister in New York City and in Milford, Massachusetts, 1824-1831. In 1831 he was one of a group of Universalists who seceded to form their own denomination, the Massachusetts Association of Universal Restorationists. While serving a Unitarian church in Mendon, Massachusetts, 1831-1842, he was for nearly a decade a leader of the Restorationist movement. During the 1830s Ballou became increasingly interested in reform causes, notably temperance and abolitionism. In 1838 he was converted to the cause of peace and Christian non-resistance. His promotion of social causes was a major factor in the breakup of the Restorationists in 1839. In 1842 he organized Fraternal Community No. 1 (later called the Hopedale Community) in Hopedale, Massachusetts. This community, founded on non-resistant principles, repudiated participation in any government that relied upon ultimate recourse to coercive force. The people of Hopedale experimented with various forms of socialism, rejecting pure communism and adopting a joint-stock constitution. The community survived and largely prospered for 14 years before the largest shareholders engineered its sudden collapse in 1856 and converted the community into a company town. During the Hopedale years Ballou edited the community's newspaper, the Practical Christian, and wrote his major works, Christian Non-Resistance (1846) and Practical Christian Socialism (1854). During the Civil War he was nearly alone among abolitionists in maintaining his pacifist principles. He remained in Hopedale as minister of the Unitarian church, retiring in 1880. Late in life he wrote a number of historical books, including History of the Hopedale Community, History of the Town of Milford, and his Autobiography. In the last year of his life he corresponded with Leo Tolstoy, upon whom Ballou's exposition of Christian non-resistance had a great influence.

About this edition

• Publisher: Blackstone Editions
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0981640230
• ISBN 13: 9780981640235
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368
• Editor: Heywood William S.